Herald Blogs

Getting personal with business-related Twitter accounts

It seems Twitter has found a way to solve a problem many businesses
come across while using the service: How do you have multiple employees
tweet under one main account, but still show the person behind the
account?

It goes back to the core point of Twitter -- the most successful
accounts have personality. And the same is true with accounts created
by businesses to keep in touch with customers. When you have a face and
a name behind the corporate tweets, it makes communication more
personal and adds value.

The best success stories come from
accounts like Starbucks and ComcastCares, where it clearly says in
the bio who is doing the typing.

A few days ago,
Twitter started testing a feature that includes the account name of the
writer within the bottom of the message (not within the 140-character
tweet -- it's only on the website). For example, if Biz (the
co-founder of Twitter) logs on the main Twitter corporate account to
send a message, it will say in a small font under the message that it
was written by Biz, and link back to his personal account.

Mashable has screen shots of what the contributors feature looks like - check 'em out here.

This feature isn't open to the public yet, but if you want to see an
example, check out the Starbucks account, which is testing this
feature.

The best way to manage an account like this is to
assign one person to the account and say who it is in the bio. But if
you need multiple people on one account, there are some ways to make it
personable. You could compile a Twitter List of all the employees who
use the account.

Make sure the bio says something like, ``Tweets
brought to you by these Acme Co. employees,'' and put a link to the
Twitter List of their personal accounts. There are how-to List guides
on Twitter.

I wouldn't recommend typing the name of the author in every tweet; it looks messy and wastes valuable characters.

If you do have multiple employees managing one main account, check out
the free applications CoTweet and HootSuite, which have some
behind-the-scenes tools for professionals to track responses and manage
multiple accounts.

But no matter what you decide, just be sure
your business account has personality and engages with other users. No
one likes to interact with a lifeless drone.